June 2003 Dream Car Of The Month

Fifty years! Unreal! Five decades' worth of ROD & CUSTOM (including some minor intermissions) with artwork being an integral part of the mix all along. How many actual cars started from illustrations or even cocktail napkin sketches? Moreover, how many started life from a drawing seen in this publication? I bet more than we'll ever know! The beauty of all this hot rod and custom art, for the most part, is that it is conceptual. How many know that the fiberglass wonder known as the Beatnik Bandit was drawn with a squared-off top? It looked kind of cool; fortunately, Roth opted for the plastic dome that made him famous. Does it make the illustration less valid? Hell no, it is part of any car's evolution. Personally, the fascination with drawing cars hit me as soon as I could hold a pencil; I'm definitely not alone on that one. And what is it about automotive art that is every bit as interesting and exciting as viewing an actual customized vehicle? It could be the free-form flow of the loose sketch or the tightness of a technical illustration. Dreams are often first seen by the public on the drawing board. No matter how you cut it, the art of rods and customs is here to stay!

It's ironic in life that when things get good, people tend to get jaded. I am referring specifically to our automotive way of life. Some folks harp on how things were better at some particular point. Certainly, there are aspects that quite possibly were. All in all, though, I think you would be hard-pressed to dispute that we live in a time where everything is available to us, eras, styles, and actual hard parts, everything. We have the ability to pick and choose, or better yet, create what we want to do with our cars.

Does a certain time in space give you a warm fuzzy? Then stay true to that. Are you more into contemporary rods? How about pushing the envelope with some new twist on the same old thing? I say build it! As far as the future of this madness is concerned, I'd say with builders like Cole Foster, Dave Lane, Alan Johnson, Tim Strange, the Kennedy brothers, and a boatload of others we all have recently witnessed, our future is pretty damn bright! Let's appreciate how good we have it! The fictitious scene represented here shows two pretty significant cars, each in their own rod or custom realms. When it came time to discuss ideas for this feature, your editor and myself thought the Barris-built Hirohata Mercury and the Pierson Brothers coupe were representative cars with a great deal of history, as well as a tribute to days gone by-ROD & CUSTOM style! Well, folks, hope I didn't whizz off anyone by drawing them too low, and here's looking at 50 more years of ROD & CUSTOM and R&C artwork!